A week in the life

Ash Wednesday does not seem too long ago, and already it is Palm Sunday. Lent’s forty days is drawing to a close. In no time it will be the Triduum, or “three days,” beginning with the Mass of the Lord’s Supper in the evening of Maundy Thursday, reaching a high point in the Easter Vigil and ending with the Evening Prayers on Easter Sunday. For Catholics like me, the Triduum, with its solemn liturgies, is the holiest time of year.

And already I can see the week unfolding – the wife, daughter and I attending the Mass on Sunday, holding strips of coconut leaf formed into little crosses, which we will have purchased at the church entrance, later to be blessed. I remember the same scene unfolding since early childhood. (A little devil whispers in my ear, “So, these are your frond memories.”) Indeed, memory is at the heart of sacred time, which relies on recurrence to suggest the constant now, the eternal moment, which is time’s destiny and perfection. No two Palm Sundays are the same, and yet they are all part and parcel of the day when, as they were approaching Jerusalem, Jesus sent two of his disciples to a village, to untie a tethered colt that they would find there (that no one had yet ridden) and bring it to him.

Mark writes, “Then they took the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on its back, and he sat on it. Many people spread their cloaks on the road, others greenery which they had cut in the fields. And those who went in front and those who followed were all shouting, ‘Hosanna! Blessings on him who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessings on the coming kingdom of our father David! Hosanna in the highest heavens!’” But this may not be the Gospel reading this time, which changes from year to year, although it always has to do with the Christ’s passion and death. But it will be the same ritual, and my and my family’s observance will remain the same except for the details. For instance, I was chosen one of the “apostles” on at least three Holy Weeks. The first time, after the Thursday evening Mass of the Lord’s supper, during which the priest washed and kissed our (the apostles’) feet, which we prepared with vigorous scrubbing and a subtle pedicure, we were led for our own “last supper” to a table about to collapse under the weight of the food, mostly donated. But the third time, after which, but definitely not because of age, I was not called to serve, our supper was as biblical as the priest could make it—meaning, just bread and wine, of which last I must have imbibed more than my fair share because the next morning I woke up with a hangover, which, fortunately, was somewhat soothed by the Brandenburg Concertos which a kindly wife played for a soused spouse. Nevertheless, as I was saying, these were but variations on the same theme.

And speaking of Maundy Thursday, in the morning of that day, the wife and I and many other couples who belong to our group will make the Via Crucis—a following of the footsteps of Christ on the Via Dolorosa, the road to Calvary—in the manner of pilgrims visiting Jerusalem, an activity the Franciscans developed into a chapel devotion in the 15th century. Ours will take place outdoors, on a hill dedicated to Mary.

And then Good Friday, on which the radios play nothing but classical music, and the boob tube shows only reruns of The Passion of the Christ and The Ten Commandments. It is a day of fasting, but folklore allows a generous, multiple serving of a traditional stew consisting of the corm of taro, jackfruit, sweet potato, banana, tapioca, steeped in coconut milk and sugar—the fare of farms hit by drought, which of the climatic conditions most resembles Lent.

After a severe ritual called the Service of the Passion of the Lord—readings, veneration of the Cross and Holy Communion—the altars are stripped of cloths and the bells of their sound, and the people are to strip themselves of thoughts and words except those of piety.

And then follows the street procession, which in this country seems to be the highlight of the Good Friday ritual.

I often join the procession and walk behind the statue of the dead Christ as it is pulled on a cart through the neighbourhood, past houses, fields and vacant lots, and people standing idly by or in prayer, and hear the words of Zechariah in his prophecy about Israel: “They shall look on him whom they have pierced.”